Thursday Oct 24, 2013

I joined Sun Microsystems in December of 1996, not quite 17 years ago. Over the course of those years, it has been my great pleasure and honor to work with a many talented folks, on a many incredible projects - first at Sun, and then at Oracle.

In those nearly 17 years, we made quite a few platforms and products accessible - including Java, GNOME, Solaris, and Linux. We pioneered many of the accessibility techniques that are now used throughout the industry, including accessibility API techniques which first appeared in the Java and GNOME accessibility APIs; and screen access techniques like the API-based switch access of the GNOME Onscreen Keyboard. Our work was recognized as groundbreaking by many in the industry, both through awards for the innovations we had delivered (such as those we received from the American Foundation for the Blind), and awards of money to develop new innovations (the two European Commission accessibility grants we received). Our knowledge and expertise contributed to the first Section 508 accessibility standard, and provided significantly to the upcoming refresh of that standard, to the European Mandate 376 accessibility standard, and to a number of web accessibility standards.

After 17 years of helping Sun and Oracle accomplish great things, it is time to start a new chapter... Today is my last day at Oracle. It is not, however, my last day in the field of accessibility. Next week I will begin working with another group of great people, and I am very much looking forward to the great things I will help contribute to in the future.

Friday Sep 20, 2013

Apple just released iOS 7, a major update to their mobile operation system. As with the the last several major updates, this release includes a number of significant accessibility enhancements. This time the major emphasis seems to be an features for folks with severe physical impairments. These advances are part of "Switch Control", which comprises two key things:

A scanning UI that will scan through the interface, selecting the object the "cursor" is over when the user activates a connected "switch"

A "gesture switch" that uses the front facing camera to recognize certain types of head movements as activating a "switch"

It is particularly gratifying to see Apple commercialize these solutions, as these are two of the things we were researching and developing prototypes for as part of the AEGIS project from 2008 through 2012:

The gesture switch functionality of OpenGazer which uses a commodity web camera to recognize facial gestures such as raising an eyebrow in order to active a "switch" (developed at the Inference Group of the University of Cambridge, another one of our AEGIS partners)

We did extensive user testing of Tecla in the AEGIS project, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. One user told us that they would happily pay many hundreds of dollars for software that would allow them to control a smart phone, and were stunned to find out the software was already in the Android store, available for free. We also did targeted user testing of OpenGazer with users with Locked-in syndrome (they couldn't speak or move muscles beyond those in their face), and there the feedback was also overwhelmingly positive. For one of the women we worked with, there was no other option that would work for her, including $10,000 camera systems that tracked eye movements (but not those of her eyes).

It is an incredible time to be alive and involved in the field of accessibility. Every year brings more and better solutions, at more affordable prices. I can't imagine any other field I would rather be in.

I'm certain I speak for all members of the WCAG2ICT Task Force and the WCAG Working Group when I say that we look forward to the completed Mandate 376 and Section 508 refresh work, and hope that our Working Group Note will have proven helpful in the efforts to develop effective, meaningful, and globally harmonized accessibility standards for ICT procurement.

Wednesday Apr 24, 2013

Project:Possibility is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating groundbreaking open source software for persons with disabilities. As part of their work, they inspire students through university coding competitions that introduce them to the possibilities unlocked by accessibility and open source assistive technology. One of the ways they do this is through SS12: Code for a Cause, in which a number of university student teams create accessible applications in a series of Code-A-Thons, competing with each other with finals held at a major disability conference.

As I noted last October at the European Policy Centre event: "The Accessibility Act – Ensuring access to goods and services across the EU", and again last month at the follow-up EPC event: "Accessibility - From European challenge to global opportunity", "There isn't a 'German Macular Degernation', a 'French Cerebral Palsy', an 'American Autism Spectrum Disorder'. Disabilities are part of the human condition. They’re not unique to any one country or geography – just like ICT. Even the built environment – phones, trains and cars – is the same worldwide. The definition of ‘accessible’ should be global – and the solutions should be too. Harmonization should be global, and not just EU-wide. It doesn’t make sense for the EU to have a different definition to the US or Japan." With these latest drafts from the W3C and Mandate 376 team, we've moved a major step forward toward that goal of a global "definition of 'accessible' ICT."

I strongly encourage all interested parties to read the Call for Review, and to submit comments during the current review period, which runs through 15 February 2013. Comments should be sent to public-wcag2ict-comments-AT-w3.org.
I want to thank my colleagues on the WCAG2ICT Task Force for the incredible time and energy and expertise they brought to this work - including particularly my co-authors Judy Brewer, Loïc Martínez Normand, Mike Pluke, Andi Snow-Weaver, and Gregg Vanderheiden; and the document editors Michael Cooper, and Andi Snow-Weaver.

Thursday Oct 04, 2012

Next week I will be in Brussels attending a policy dialog held at the European Policy Centre on Thursday October 11th. It is titled "The Accessibility Act – ensuring access to goods and services across the EU", and I will be part of a distinguished panel exploring some of the issues the upcoming European Accessibility Act may address - with a particular emphasis in my case on the role of ICT accessibility. This morning policy dialog will be followed by a more focused workshop in the afternoon looking at specific challenges and potential solutions to those challenges. Oracle is sponsoring this policy dialog and workshop, alongside the European Disability Forum.

One particularly interesting thing in this second draft is the idea of applying the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 (AA level) to non-web platforms and applications. This is set forth in provision E207.2 WCAG Conformance which states: "User interface components and content of platforms and applications shall conform to Level A and Level AA Success Criteria and Conformance Requirements specified for web pages in WCAG 2.0 (incorporated by reference in Chapter 1)." In explaining this decision, the Access Board noted that: "WCAG is written to be technology neutral. While oriented towards web pages which are defined as being delivered using HTTP, it is straightforward to apply the WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria and Conformance Requirements to user interface components and content of platforms and applications."

Many of public comments to the Access Board praised the significant use of WCAG 2.0 throughout this draft, and appreciated the potential to simplify the standard, but raised concerns that for a number of the WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria it wasn't so straightforward to do this. The April 2012 M376 draft followed the Access Board's lead in using WCAG 2.0 but noted a number of places where they felt it didn't apply to non-web ICT.

To better clarify this use of WCAG 2.0, Oracle joined with a number of our colleagues working in industry, disability advocacy, U.S. and European accessibility standards bodies, and U.S. Federal agencies - all with deep accessibility technology expertise as well as WCAG 2.0 knowledge - to develop guidance in applying WCAG to non-web ICT as part of a new W3C WAI Task Force: "WCAG2ICT".

I also want to thank the participants of the WCAG2ICT Task Force for the incredible time and energy and expertise they brought to this work - including particularly my co-authors Judy Brewer, Loïc Martínez Normand, Mike Pluke, Andi Snow-Weaver, and Gregg Vanderheiden; and the document editors Shadi Abou-Zahra, Michael Cooper, and Andi Snow-Weaver.

This release also makes available the AEGIS-funded GNOME Shell Magnifier. This magnifier leverages the powerful graphics functionality built into all modern video cards for smooth and fast magnification in GNOME. You can watch a video of that magnifier (with the previous version of the preference dialog), which shows all of the features now available in GNOME 3.4. This includes full/partial screen magnification, a magnifier lens, full or partial mouse cross hairs with translucency, and several mouse tracking modes.

Tuesday Mar 13, 2012

Last December the U.S. Access Board published their second Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ("2011 ANPRM") - a second draft of the new accessibility regulations for Federal procurement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Comments on this draft were due March 7th.

I have had the pleasure of being closely involved in the Section 508 refresh process from the beginning, as part of the advisory committee to the Access Board which produced an advisory report to help the Board create their refreshed rules. I am very much looking forward to the next steps in this process, and particularly to the final rule, which should be a major step forward.

This year Oracle is giving a presentation on Java & JavaFX accessibility, and I'm joining several AEGIS colleagues in giving 3 presentations on our work in the AEGIS project. Finally, I'm taking part ATIA's Accessibility Forum. Here's the full schedule:

Wednesday Nov 09, 2011

Moments ago, my computer spoke to me: "Oracle Solaris installation is complete. Review the Oracle Solaris installation log for more information." This was followed by "Oracle Solaris installation log button" (telling me that that is the focused button on my screen). Three TAB presses later ("Quit button", "Help button", "Reboot button") and a press of the RETURN key, and my computer rebooted with a brand spanking new accessible installation of Solaris 11, Oracle's latest operating system release that was just announced earlier today!

I began my involvement in Solaris accessibility work just over 11 years ago, with the GNOME Accessibility Summit that we held during the annual Closing the Gap conference in Minneapolis Minnesota, October 19, 2000. Sun had decided to give its Solaris desktop a face lift into the modern world, and choose to do that with GNOME. And I was tapped to help the Sun Ireland engineering team - the initial home for GNOME at Sun - build accessibility into GNOME, and thereby into Solaris.

In the intervening 11 years a lot has happened that help make Solaris 11 accessible, with a LiveCD that can talk right through the installation process. Oracle Solaris 11 is the culmination of many many staff-years of work, begun at Sun, and completed at Oracle, with lots of community contributions along the way (GNOME, Firefox, etc.). And now it is available for use!

Today K.U.Leuven has announced something that makes both of these extensions even better: AccessODF. AccessODF is a third extension which adds a powerful accessibility checker to the office suite, allowing authors to find and fix accessibility errors in Writer documents. Properly marked up, accessible documents can then be used to generate accessible DAISY books, to print out properly formatted Braille documents, or to create accessible PDF files. AccessODF is fully cross platform, working on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris. And like odt2daisy and odt2braille, it also works as an extension to LibreOffice.

AccessODF, along with odt2daisy and odt2braille, will be one of the highlights at the upcoming AEGIS Conference in Brussels at the end of this month.

We implemented the accessibility API using a Broker pattern: providing a separate Broker class that is optionally loaded into the Java mobile runtime alongside the LWUIT application, and which implements the accessibility API on behalf of the LWUIT component

We implemented an inter-process communication Accessibility Bus MIDlet that handles event tracking and forwards accessibility API calls from assistive technologies to the application (which then get handled by the Broker)

We implemented several "test" assistive technologies: Java mobile versions of the perennial desktop favorites "Ferret" and "Monkey" (as well as their Java Access Bridge counterparts "Java Ferret" and "Java Monkey" for the JavaSE accessibility API)

Disclaimer: at this point our work is still research. It is not part of any announced product roadmap. As the standard Oracle presentation disclaimer states, you should not make a purchasing decision based on this research.